300 acre grazing livestock business

In this model, 300 acres of permanent pasture land is used to produce beef and lamb. Beef animals are kept on a suckler system with 25 animals finished per year at 24 months and 5 retained, these are worth approximately £1,400 each, bringing in £35,000 and 4 cull cows worth approximately £850 each, totalling £3,400.

300 ewes are kept, producing on average 500 lambs. 70 are kept as replacements and 10 are lost, leaving 420 lambs to sell at £80 each, bringing in £33,600. Fifty cull ewes a year are sold at £50 each, bringing in £2500.

The farm turnover is approximately £74,500, before grants are factored in. This income could be increased by building an on-farm butchery unit and selling meat directly to customers from the farm, through boxes or online sales. This would increase the farm turnover and add resilience to the business, but would come with increased fixed and labour costs associated with processing and direct marketing as well as the costs of installing the processing room.

As the land is permanent pasture, hay and silage are made and concentrates are brought in. An alternative to buying feeds would be to use an additional 30 acres to grow feed crops, which would require additional machinery and contractor costs. In this model the margins are very tight and fixed costs account for around 70% -75% of the business costs, leaving a narrow margin for the wages for the farmer and a part-time farm hand, and little surplus to repay any loans.

These costs do not factor in rental costs for land or buildings, or income from grants or subsidies. These costs and opportunities would vary by locality and would be likely to make or break the business plan. The 300 acres of permanent pasture, managed in this way would have significant environmental and biodiversity benefits.